Pool

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Archana trying her hand at any aiming game will wind up sucking at it.  So, a couple of weeks ago, when I discovered the existence of a pool (a.k.a billiards) table at work, I wasn't too excited. However, a few of my co-workers made pool into the go-to choice of work-break upon this discovery. One day last week, one of tried to persuade me to give pool-playing a shot too.

Given my history of "success" at playing aiming-games, I was not particularly looking forward to trying to play pool at work. Making a fool of myself while playing pool in front of friends and family (both of which I have done spectacularly at various thankfully rare points in time) was one thing. But in front of co-workers? No way!

But then, it was just *one* other co-worker who is also a good friend. How bad could it be?

Not that bad. Turned out the co-worker was quite the beginner as well and I actually wound up winning. How cool, maybe pool was the *one* aiming game that I could actually play decently!

So, the next time round, when two other co-workers were also thrown into the mix, I was very blase and agreed to play. As soon as we started playing, it was quite obvious that the other two co-workers were definitely not at beginner level. Within a couple of shots, it also became quite obvious that the latest entry in the long list of aiming-games I suck at is pool. Quite obviously, my victory in the first game was a classic case of beginner's luck. For, that day, I lost *every* game I played. By the time we were done, my ego was somewhere underground trying to shrivel up into a little ball and die.

Two days later, the four of us again got a chance to play together. As we partnered up into twos, V and K in one team and B and myself in the other, V said, "Hey, don't underestimate them. B is playing really well today". To which K replied, laughing, "That is okay. I have full faith in Archana's ability to balance things out." Though I joined in the good-natured laughter that followed, I was mortified. Because - I *knew* that K was right. B and I did win that game. My "contribution" though, consisted of sinking exactly one ball into the hole followed by rolling in the white cue ball as well. Great!

Still - pool is addictive. So I gamely continue to play. I have come to the conclusion that while I have no innate pool-playing ability whatsoever,  I can probably at least become a non-bad player if I practised enough. While it feels great to be good at something, one does not necessarily need to be good at something to enjoy it, no?

Bring on the aiming-games, I say!

Poker

A while ago, I had gone to see the latest James Bond movie - Casino Royale. All through the opening credits, I wondered why so much animation based on playing cards was being shown. Sometime into the movie, casinos and playing cards came into the picture sporadically. I still did not make the connection. Finally, when James Bond and the villain started playing a high stakes poker game, it finally hit me - the casino in Casino Royale referred to a gambling casino (duh!) and the cards in the opening credits referred to the poker game (ya, I can be pretty slow that way).

Despite this flash of enlightenment, from that point onwards, I could no longer fully follow the movie. You see, though I have dabbled in a few card games (trump, rummy, judgement, literature, ass and so on) poker is a card game which, though I have heard a lot about, I have never actually played and hence could not follow.

While the movie progressed with lots of excitement (for the people on screen) when words like full house and flush cropped up, I was totally lost. The only full house I knew of was when I had a lot of guests over and flush was something I did whenever I used the restroom. This considered, I just decided to decipher the results of the game in the movie based on the reactions of the actors.

Once I got back home, I looked up poker on the ever-dependable Wikipedia. Of course, nothing made much sense. Nevertheless, I dutifully forwarded the article to my parents, who were going to watch Casino Royale the next day so that at least they could enjoy the movie better. And soon forgot all about learning to play poker.

Yesterday, I went over to visit some friends. They had a poker set and we decided to play. V and me were new to poker having never played before. R and S were three games old and being more experienced, were our instructors. They explained the basic rules of play. Then, to help us all with determining our hand, we opened the wiki page with the hand rank details and used it as reference.

To make it more interesting, the four of us decided to start off with a five-buck-a-person supply of chips. After a trial round which V promptly won ("Beginner's luck!" R and S said), we started proper play.

None of us being pros or even seasoned players, each of us settled into our own style of playing. R would keep raising for no special rhyme or reason - his strategy seemed to be based on blind luck rather than anything else. It did not help that his luck supply was running rather low yesterday :-). S would get super excited whenever she got a good hand and would bet very high early on and thus cause everyone else to panic and fold immediately :-). V would keep raising the stakes. When the time came for him to actually show his hand, he would frantically start looking for all permutations and combinations which might lead to a winning hand. I was playing conservatively. If I stayed long enough in a round, it usually meant that I had something to show for it.

Initially, other than poor R, the rest of us seemed to be doing decently. Then, much to R's and V's dismay, the chips started vanishing from their piles and reappearing on mine or S's. Still, there was a lot of good natured teasing, plotting and joking going on. All the while, the excellent homemade fudge and fudge topping made by S kept us company. It was so much fun and we played on for a really long time.

At the end of the day, I had won the most (yaaay!) followed closely by S. R and V had, of course, contributed everything of what S and I won :-D! I happily said that we should do this more often ;-). V declared that the next time I came over I would probably be reaching for the poker set even before I took off my footwear - hehehehe!

So now I am a poker pro (!?!) . Say "poker" and watch me talk with great proficiency about Straight Flushes, Two pairs and what not.

And yet another item on the list of things I have always wanted to learn checked :-).

Bowl baby bowl - 2nd edition

It had to happen sometime. And that sometime happened to be today. This time's fun-event at work was scheduled to be bowling. Oh dear lord!

To top it all, our HR manager cheerfully announced before we got ready to leave, "Oh by the way, all your names have been randomly keyed in at the lanes we are playing in. So find your team by looking at the screen. Have fun!"

Oh no! So not only would I get to bask in my bowling glory, I would probably get to do it in a team filled with people I might not even be that familiar with. Great!

No wonder, just before leaving for the bowling alley, I went to my friend P's cube and whined, "Can I please just go home? I don't want to go bowling in a team filled with unfamiliar people!" P asked me to be a good sport and come. And then asked me how it mattered if I was in a team filled with unfamiliar people. I crossly said, "Duh, because, I can't ask them to shut up if they start giving me bowling instructions?"

Anyways, resiging myself to an afternoon of humiliation, I set off. My randomly picked team of five had exactly one person I knew fairly well. Great!

When we started off, as I had predicted, my bowling ball invariably found kinship with the gutter and set off towards it with great delight as soon as I let the ball go. After a bunch of abysmal throws interspersed with some fluke good throws, I realized something. While my team-mates hi-fived and cheered me for the good throws, no one said *anything* about the bad ones, and what's more, did not even have any kind of look of commiseration or pity!

At that point, I realized that everyone was just out to have a good time and I too should just let go and stop worrying about my game so much. So I decided instead to focus on enjoying it :-)! The rest, as they say, was history!

Ah, not really. But I managed a couple of strikes (yes!!!) and once went through an entire game without throwing a single gutter ball. You are probably scoffing at this point and thinking what's the big deal. But then, you don't know that on some previous bowling outing, I have gone through an entire game where every throw of mine except the first two throws went into the gutter!

Ya my score was still trailing along the bottom of the score cards - but I played for the entire duration for which the lanes were booked and did play much better than before. More importantly, I had a good time :-D!

I guess I have finally made my peace with the bowling Gods!

Bowl baby bowl

We were going to have a fun-outing at work. On a weekday afternoon. "Yaay, awesome," I thought. Then the venue got posted. Some place which sounded very much like a place which would have bowling lanes, pool tables, video games - the works. Oh no, oh no, oh no. Would I really have to bowl?

My first experience with bowling was sometime during my undergrad. That time, it was a new- fangled thing in Chennai. Me and a couple of my friends went for it with great excitement. To our major surprise, for utter novices we played quite decently - even managing "strikes" at times (though we did not know the official terminology then). Only later did I realize that the reason for our marvelous performance was that the railing next to the gutter had been raised. Apparently, the bowling alley owner had thought it wouldn't be good for business if customers got discouraged by balls rolling off into the gutter. So much for believing to be naturally gifted bowlers - hmph X-(! Anyways, I think I played once more in Chennai after that.

After that, it was straight to Davis. There, I confirmed my previous suspicions. I simply sucked at bowling. Without any railing to disuade the ball, any bowling ball I threw invariably found its way to the gutter. Even a bowling ball which started off treading the straight and narrow path would abruptly change its mind just as it was about to strike a pin and docilely roll off into the gutter. My friends blamed my technique - but I am quite sure the Bowling Gods hated me for some reason. Still, a stray ball now and then would actually strike some pins - so in spite of the teasing I did not really mind going bowling. Bowling was good fun, really!

Then, after I moved to the Bay, during some trip I made back to Davis, a motley gang of ten of us went to the university games center for an evening of bowling. After some initial ball-meeting-pins action, *each and every* ball of mine started going right into the gutter. Without exception.

The nine others who started off teasing me mercilessly soon realized that here was someone in dire and urgent need of bowling lessons. Of course, while playing a non-team sport in a non-competitive environment, there is nothing better than offering advice to hapless novices. Thus I hear nine voices at the same time: "Bend more", "Your arm is too twisted", "Swivel a little", "Turn at the hip". Had I followed all those instructions, I would have probably stood in front of the bowling lane like Ash in that impossibly twisted pose in that poster from Taal (with hands down though).

So, after a point, I stopped heeding any advice. With great self-consciousness, I played worse and worse under the relentless stare of nine pairs of sympathetic eyes. Let's just say that night wasn't the proudest moment of my sporting life. Anyway, after that episode, I declared that unless I practised and improved, I would go bowling only when accompanied by close friends and close friends only.

So you can imagine my apprehension about the team-outing. The last thing I wanted was a ring of people I work with on a daily basis to surround me and start tossing bowling instructions from all directions.

Today was D-day. When we arrived at the venue, ta da: no bowling alleys! But all the other regular fixtures were there - air-hockey, ping pong tables, pool tables, fooz-ball, volley-ball - the works. My colleague invited me to an air-hockey game at once. I started off saying "Oh, I don't play that well" and then whipped the puck right into his goal :-))! From that point it was war - turns out I don't suck blatantly at air-hockey. It was good fun playing with different people. Then I learnt pool (make that re-learnt) - I sucked big time, but I did feel posh (like "rich" people from old desi movies :-)). Then tried my hand at ping pong (again, not too bad). Must say I had a whole lot of fun. Its true - its not about winning or losing, its about how you play the game.

Or in my case, how you enjoy the game :-)!

Play time

I lifted the idea for this "game" from here . Its good fun to play :-)!

Reiterating the rules, basically you need to add a comment to the post stating which letters you got for word verification. You also need to add how you think the word should be pronounced and what you think the meaning would be.

For e.g., my word "definition" comment on that post had been this:

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Word: hmhfcw

Pronounciation: hem-hef-cow

Definition: A cow which can't make up its mind.

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What are going to come up with :-)?